Bézout matrix

In mathematics, a Bézout matrix (or Bézoutian or Bezoutiant) is a special square matrix associated with two polynomials, introduced by Sylvester (1853) and Cayley (1857) and named after Étienne Bézout. Bézoutian may also refer to the determinant of this matrix, which is equal to the resultant of the two polynomials. Bézout matrices are sometimes used to test the stability of a given polynomial.

Definition

Let f(z) and g(z) be two complex polynomials of degree at most n with coefficients (note that any coefficient could be zero):

The Bézout matrix of order n associated with the polynomials f and g is

where the coefficients result from the identity

It is in and the entries of that matrix are such that if we note for each i,j=1,...,n, , then:

To each Bézout matrix, one can associate the following bilinear form, called the Bézoutian:

Examples

The last row and column are all zero as f and g have degree strictly less than n (equal 4). The other zero entries are because for each i=0,...,n, either or is zero.

Properties

Applications

An important application of Bézout matrices can be found in control theory. To see this, let f(z) be a complex polynomial of degree n and denote by q and p the real polynomials such that f(iy)=q(y)+ip(y) (where y is real). We also note r for the rank and σ for the signature of . Then, we have the following statements:

The third statement gives a necessary and sufficient condition concerning stability. Besides, the first statement exhibits some similarities with a result concerning Sylvester matrices while the second one can be related to Routh-Hurwitz theorem.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.